Journalist Attempts To Silence Criticism Of Her Ethics By Brandishing The Club Of UK Defamation Laws

from the journalism dept

Defamation is only supposed to apply to cases where there's a factually false statement made about someone. It shouldn't apply to cases where the facts are accurate, or the statements are opinions. But while the US's defamation laws generally deal pretty well with this, it's not as clear elsewhere. The UK, unfortunately, is somewhat famous for its bad defamation laws, where the burden is generally on the accused to prove they didn't defame someone -- which can be an expensive process. Over the past week or so, video gaming journalists and industry watchers have been dealing with a bit of controversy. Eurogamer columnist Rab Florence wrote a column questioning the close relationship between some gaming journalists and the companies they cover, where it sometimes seems like the journalists are pitch people, rather than objective journalists. This is not a new concern, especially in video game journalism, where such accusations tend to show up pretty regularly (sometimes more accurately than others).

While a lot of the controversy is over those accusations, that's not the really controversial thing that happened. That's because part of Florence's article quoted some tweets from Lauren Wainwright, who worked for another publication, and then pointed out that the tweets at least raised concerns in his mind. Here's what he wrote:

One games journalist, Lauren Wainwright, tweeted: “Urm… Trion were giving away PS3s to journalists at the GMAs. Not sure why that’s a bad thing?”

Now, a few tweets earlier, she also tweeted this: “Lara header, two TR pix in the gallery and a very subtle TR background. #obsessed @tombraider pic.twitter.com/VOWDSavZ”

And instantly I am suspicious. I am suspicious of this journalist’s apparent love for Tomb Raider. I am asking myself whether she’s in the pocket of the Tomb Raider PR team. I’m sure she isn’t, but the doubt is there. After all, she sees nothing wrong with journalists promoting a game to win a PS3, right?

Another journalist, one of the winners of the PS3 competition, tweeted this at disgusted RPS writer John Walker: “It was a hashtag, not an advert. Get off the pedestal.” Now, this was Dave Cook, a guy I’ve met before. A good guy, as far as I could tell. But I don’t believe for one second that Dave doesn’t understand that in this time of social media madness a hashtag is just as powerful as an advert. Either he’s on the defensive or he doesn’t get what being a journalist is actually about.

The first is that a lot of people want to know more about why I made the changes and issued an apology. The answer is that Lauren Wainwright threatened us with legal action and made it clear she would not back down, at which point we took legal advice and ultimately made the decision to remove the paragraphs. It was not a decision that I took lightly. One objection to this action that I've read online is that there was no libel. All I can really say is that the advice we received meant that removing the offending text and apologising to Lauren was the right course of action to take. We also considered the fact that the article wasn't really about her but about all of us, and I felt that the edited version did not change Rab's meaning.

It's entirely possible that Eurogamer removed the content because of the cost that would be involved in fighting off a lawsuit, but it is a big issue to see a journalist threaten another publication over quoting her and expressing an opinion. Wainwright could have merely responded to the questions directly -- but going so far as to threaten litigation is ridiculous and deserves to be called out. In fact, as Erik Kain at Forbes points out in the link above, it's not just ridiculous, it's hypocritical, since Wainwright herself has a history of quoting others' tweets and then adding commentary.

What it highlights is that she apparently didn't like Florence's opinion, which is clearly stated as his opinion. He worries about even the appearance of possible bias, which is a reasonable position to take. But rather than leading to an interesting discussion about bias and journalism, it instead went into this ridiculous detour about defamation law and censorship over criticism.

troll
WHAT ABOUT YOUR CORPORATE MASTERS MIKE? Talk about a Google shill.
/troll

We were just talking about this but you see, it's inevitable!

Ahem. On topic. Streisand sings. One way to make people automatically assume what the journalist wrote is true is to sue. A better course of action would be to issue an official note addressing his worries, being open about the association and explaining how it doesn't make her biased in anyway. Problem solved, no damages.

Not actually true

"Defamation is only supposed to apply to cases where there's a factually false statement made about someone."

No, that isn't actually the history of defamation laws. Historically defamation law was about *defamation* not whether the defamation was true or not. Many venues and laws have the **added** restriction that it is ok to defame someone if the defamation is true, but that is not true of all venues.

The problem is your equivocation on "supposed to". That truth is a defense against defamation laws isn't a universal fact, nor is it "suppose to" in those venues. It is your opinion, and mine, that defamation law should allow facts to be legally disseminated even if they are defamatory, and that in many venues the law is "supposed to" work that way.

In a carefully executed plan to bring more attention to the original opinion that Lauren Wainwright's actions allow for suspicion over her opinions and that she finds the concern over the 'prizes' she won is necessary to hide, the editor acquiesced to her threats of legal recourse and apologized. All of which does not make her look less suspicious....

That linked article brings out an interesting tidbit about Wainwright, which kind of only adds ruin to her already tarnished rep.

She claims she never "reviewed" products for Square Enix (despite consulting for them), yet they link numerous articles written by her calling Square's take on Tomb Raider "fresh" and "innovative" and commenting on how "fantastic" they look. What irks me about these kind of "preview" articles is that they seem to cultivate hype in people. For example, I've seen IGN preview a number of titles commenting on how exciting and good they look only later to give the game a depressing review.

Re:

I keep trying to point this out to people. She's a hypocrite and a liar as well as a bully and a coward:

She's a hypocrite for threatening to sue over someone copying a public tweet, which she has done on her blog

She's a liar for claiming never to have reviewed a Square Enix product when having done so - many times, and always with strangely glowing reviews, and she's a bully for trying to shut down legitimate comment on her questionable actions Via legal threats.

She's a coward for trying to scrub traces of her Square Enix employment from her various online profiles and protecting her feed so people cant see her bullshit (although that could be seen as a good thing, on reflection)

How she has any form of credibility left is beyond me. I genuinely hope her career is wrecked by this (and yes, I know she's 25, and having a career ruined so young is a harsh thing, but I do believe she's worked hard to earn that wreck.

Re: Not actually true

1. A false and defamatory statement concerning another;
2. The unprivileged publication of the statement to a third party (that is, somebody other than the person defamed by the statement);
3.If the defamatory matter is of public concern, fault amounting at least to negligence on the part of the publisher; and
4.Damage to the plaintiff.

Re:

Re: Not actually true

Historically defamation law was about *defamation* not whether the defamation was true or not.

Perhaps, I don't know the history. However, I would argue that if a claim is true, then stating that claim publicly is not defamation at all -- the defamation was in the actions of the person in the first place, not the ones saying "look at that, will ya?"

But, in the US, this is a classic example of balancing rights. Why should my right to free speech be violated when I am speaking truth?

To defame someone is to hurt their reputation--regardless of whether the claim is true or false. It is defamation. The question is whether defamation based on truth should be legally *actionable*, not whether it is defamation.